Paper ID: 2112.11687

Squareplus: A Softplus-Like Algebraic Rectifier

Jonathan T. Barron

We present squareplus, an activation function that resembles softplus, but which can be computed using only algebraic operations: addition, multiplication, and square-root. Because squareplus is ~6x faster to evaluate than softplus on a CPU and does not require access to transcendental functions, it may have practical value in resource-limited deep learning applications.

Submitted: Dec 22, 2021